Perhaps they will start by cleaning house at the National Republican Senate Committee, whose staff moved heaven and earth to keep them out of the Senate
Cochran’s victory over McDaniel is a wake-up call for conservatives
The win of Sen. W. Thad Cochran over state Sen. Christopher B. McDaniel in the June 24 GOP Mississippi Senate Primary runoff by less than 5,000 votes is a pyrrhic victory for the Republican establishment.
To save Cochran, the Republican leadership, specifically the National Senate Campaign Committee, the National Rifle Association, National Right to Life, former governor Haley Barbour and the Chamber of Commerce, stepped out of the shadows to support Cochran.
Take note: the National Rifle Association and National Right to Life supported Cochran, not McDaniel, whose views on restoring gun rights and legal protection to the unborn are absolutist.
Yes, there were dirty tricks. Stolen signs, funny voting patterns and favors traded and paid off.
Yes, it is obvious that Cochran has been carrying on for several years with one of his female aides—while his actual and legal wife continues to linger in a managed residential facility. McDaniel did not bring up the girlfriend, but he is a better man than I am.
Late last year, the buzz on Capitol Hill was that Cochran was going to step aside. But, when McDaniel emerged as the likely successor, GOP leaders put the touch on the incumbent to block McDaniel.
After 41 years in Washington, Cochran may have been tired, but in a state like Mississippi, federal largesse is mother’s milk—not just welfare, but military spending and grants to the state’s colleges and universities.
In his victory speech to supporters, Cochran claimed his win was a win for government jobs and military spending.
It was not an accident that Cochran made a campaign stop at Naval Air Station Meridian with another ancient mariner Sen. John S. McCain III (R.-Ariz.) touting his seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. There is no doubt that if the Republicans take the Senate in November, the senator will become the committee chairman—one of the most powerful men in Washington.
In the June 3 primary, McDaniel bested Cochran with 49.5 percent, by just more than 1,300 votes, but it was not more than 50 percent, so the runoff was required.
Conservatives will bemoan how the Cochran campaign canvassed and delivered new votes from Democrats and the senator’s robocalls that called the Tea Party racist. But, the McDaniel camp was not without help.
Club for Growth, Citizens United, Senate Conservative Fund, FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots and all the radio hosts and all the pundits and all the political tourists need to step back and figure out what just happened.
The way to win an election is to fight for voters and get them to the polls.
To do those two simple steps takes work. Grunt work. Not mailers, not TV ads, not bus tours and not scorecards. It is grunt work of knocking on doors, working the phones and going back to the same doors and the same phone numbers.
People have won without doing the work, but rarely does it happen if the other side is doing their own voter ID and get-out-the-vote operation.
In the end, conservatives would have accepted the McDaniel loss if it was a fair fight. It will be many years before they forgive and forget being called racists and having busloads of Democrats thrown against them.
Perhaps they will start by cleaning house at the National Republican Senate Committee, whose staff moved heaven and earth to keep them out of the Senate.
Neil W. McCabe is the editor of Human Event’s “Guns & Patriots” e-letter and was a senior reporter at the Human Events newspaper. McCabe deployed with the Army Reserve to Iraq for 15 months as a combat historian. For many years, he was a reporter and photographer for “The Pilot,” Boston’s Catholic paper. He was also the editor of two free community papers, “The Somerville (Mass.) News and “The Alewife (North Cambridge, Mass.).”
